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Newsletter Number 40 The Palaeontology40 Newsletter Contents Editorial 2 News 3 Association Meetings Programme 7 Association Business 8 Advert: Technical Editor 9 Accounts 10-12 Palaeo-Reply 13 Meeting Reports 16 How Resilient is Life? 18 Correspondence 20 Future Meetings of Other Bodies 21 Book Reviews 28 Palaeontology vol 42 parts 1 & 2 31-32 Reminder: The deadline for copy for Issue no 41 is 30th May 1999 On the Web: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/paleonet/PalAss/PalAss.html Newsletter 40 2 Editorial I had a baby in January, and it has raised a series of questions which I would like a better palaeontologist than me to answer. Apart from obvious questions, like why have I done this, why weren’t we more careful, why can’t we all be marsupials, I have come up with a question I would really like to have answered. When in human evolution did such dependent babies evolve? It seems to me, usually at four in the morning, that there are two constraints on this. The first is social. A baby takes a lot of resources to maintain, especially as it removes one member of the resource gathering unit from use for a period of time. So I presume that dependent babies rely on larger social groupings than babies that are independent soon after birth. Secondly, a baby which is unable to attach itself to the mother needs to be attached, which necessitates the use of tools, in the broadest sense. I had previously thought of tools as being those durable materials that have a chance of fossilisation, or preservation, such as knives and arrowheads. However, without a sling of some kind, how could a dependent baby be managed? I know these type of materials would be unlikely to be preserved, but can we assume that the use of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ tools go hand in hand, and that the acquisition of one implies the acquisition of the other? If both of these constraints are valid, then were australopithecine babies less helpless than hominids, and is this a larger morphological transition than many of the mature skeletal attributes which are used in defining hominid species? Please contribute to solving my problem, if you have any thoughts on the subject, or tell me which paper solved it many years ago. In the meantime, I will arrogantly suggest that there may be a gender bias in our assessments of human evolution, which may have prevented these questions from being asked before. And perhaps even suggest that this bias might apply to other fossil groups where gender was relevant to morphology or function. Perhaps this is enough palaeontological Germaine Greer-ing: I will go and feed my baby. Sue Rigby University of Edinburgh (Email: [email protected]) Newsletter 40 3 news Changes at the Association: All Members please note After over a year and a half of discussions, consultations, and deliberations amongst both Council and the wider membership, the Palaeontological Association has finally had the permission of the Charity Commissioners to appoint an Executive Officer. This is a half-time paid position, to handle the basic running activities such as membership and subscriptions, sales, day-to-day money matters, and the increasingly large amounts of correspondence and other paperwork that a mature, thriving organisation generates. Council’s thinking was that this position should deal with those time-consuming and essential routine matters that were formerly shared out by Council members with full-time jobs, but which were also increasingly going to be seen by RAE- and publication-conscious Heads of Department as of no contribution to a department’s academic profile. Jobs that require a high degree of expertise in our subject and to which some kudos attaches (such as editing and Newsletter management, and the major offices of Treasurer, Secretary and President) will continue to be handled by Council members on a voluntary basis. Tim Palmer was appointed to this new position as from the first Council Meeting of 1999, having resigned as Treasurer. He is already hard at work – and full of admiration for the amount of time that has been devoted by his predecessors: Mike Barker (membership), Jane Francis (institutional membership), Andy King and his helpers (sales), and Mark Purnell (publicity). This means that there is a new contact procedure that all members need to make a note of when it comes to paying subscriptions, ordering Pal Ass publications at members’ prices, and making other enquiries of a non-editorial nature. The relevant changes will be made to the details given in the Newsletter and on the inside cover of Palaeontology and Special Papers in Palaeontology in due course. Council had originally hoped to make this appointment in the autumn of 1998. The delay has meant that the surge of work that is normally associated with the end of the year has been delayed to mid-January. The only change that most members are likely to notice is a slight delay in processing their subscription payments, or answering routine enquiries. We shall have caught up by the time this Newsletter is published. news Some members will also know that we have moved printing of both Palaeontology and Special Papers in Palaeontology to Blackwell’s. By the time you are reading this, we expect that the first part of Palaeontology Vol. 42 will have been published and issued seamlessly. If any unforeseen problems have arisen, then please let us know. In the meanwhile, for action on any of the above, please contact: Dr Tim Palmer, Executive Officer The Palaeontological Association I.G.E.S., University of Wales Aberystwyth Tel / Switchboard: +44 (0) 1970 622643 Aberystwyth, Ceredigion SY23 3DB Fax / Answerphone: +44 (0) 1970 627107 Wales, U.K. E-Mail: [email protected] Newsletter 40 4 Palaeontology Our journal, Palaeontology, is now accredited with the International Association for Plant Taxonomy for the purpose of registration of all fossil plants. David Loydell Portsmouth University PalAss Web Site The Association’s Web site is settling down nicely at its new address, and thanks to a great deal of hard work by Mark Purnell it is a very attractive and accessible site, with a lot of new and useful information. The URL is http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/paleonet/PalAss/PalAss.html Tim Palmer Coral Reef Slide Set Marking the International Year of the Reef, a set of slides “Coral Reef Cities under the Sea” and a guide to introduce coral reefs to students and adults were prepared by R.N. Ginsburg (Professor of Marine Geology, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami) with the assistance of S. Lutz, P. Kramer and B. Bischoff, and sponsored by Project Miami Reef, Awareness, Research, Education; the Hachette Filipacchi Foundation. The set of slides is an excellent way to introduce coral reefs to a variety of audiences ranging from middle-school students to senior citizens. The collection uses images to compare functional aspects of coral reefs and cities. For example, one slide has images of an apartment house and a colonial coral, another joins a water purification plant with sponges that filter sea water, and others compare hazards: fires in cities are like the bleaching of corals by unusually warm ocean temperatures. You can see examples of these slides on the Web at http://rsmas.miami.edu/groups/rare/cities The approximate price of the slide set (35 slides, 20 with combined images) and guide (text with explanations of each slide) is US$ 75.00, including air mail postage and handling. You can request further information by sending e-mail to R.N. Ginsburg at [email protected]. Fernando Alvarez Departamento de Geologia Universidad de Oviedo Oviedo news… Newsletter 40 5 HOLOSTRAT launched news… Imagine that you are interested in the carbon isotope stratigraphy of a particular section or interval. Or perhaps you want to learn about its bentonites, or graptolites, or geochronology, or any other aspect of stratigraphy. Where do you go for information? You might have a comprehensive and well-ordered collection of literature that you know thoroughly, or you might undertake a library search or talk to colleagues. But new and exciting possibilities for compiling and integrating stratigraphic information are created by the launch of HOLOSTRAT, a joint venture between the British Geological Survey (BGS) and the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London. HOLOSTRAT establishes an area on the BGS Web site (http://www.bgs.ac.uk) for the geological community at large to obtain information on the stratigraphy of the UK, literally putting that information at your fingertips. (See the article by Peter Allen and Peter Rawson, Geoscientist, November 1998, p. 14). The first contribution to HOLOSTRAT is now available on the BGS Web site, and is a compilation of files relating to the type Ludlow Series in the Welsh Borderland. You can reach it by clicking the Free Downloads button on the BGS Home Page, and then following the path through ‘HOLOSTRAT’. The compilation contains a series of hyperlinked PDF (Portable Document Format) files, so you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view them, but Acrobat Reader is freely available as a download from the Adobe Web site, and we have provided plenty of opportunities for users of HOLOSTRAT to obtain it. The PDF files may be viewed on-line in your Web browser, or if you prefer can be downloaded as either a self-extracting executable or a zipped file. Once you have opened the Ludlow volume, you can investigate any of the many aspects of Ludlow stratigraphy that it contains. An introductory page contains links to files on chronostratigraphy, geochronology, lithostratigraphy, methods of correlation (biostratigraphy, bentonites, chemostratigraphy) and important sections, while additional links between files relate various aspects of Ludlow stratigraphy to each other, and to maps, vertical sections and other diagrams.
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